EDITORIAL: Silent victory

President Barack Obama recently signed into law the measure that extends a 2 percentage-point Social Security withholding for two months so that congressional negotiators will be able to hash out an agreement to continue it for all of 2012. It also extends benefits for the long-term unemployed.

The bill certainly has its drawbacks. It does put a little more money in workers' paychecks - $20 a week for someone making $50,000 a year, $10 a week for someone earning $25,000 annually. But it is shortsighted to take that money out of the Social Security fund, which has well-documented financial problems of its own.

Further, it's regrettable that partisan bickering left Congress unable to decide what to do about the tax break for a full calendar year.

Obama, yielding to environmentalist opposition to the pipeline, wanted to wait till after next year's elections to decide whether to proceed. Republicans shrewdly linked the pipeline to the payroll tax, and now the president must approve construction within 60 days or say that it's not in the national interest to do so.

That ought to be an easy call.

Second news flash: If the U.S. doesn't buy the Canadian oil sands stuff, someone else will.

The wisdom of the two-month payroll tax break may be questionable, but getting a quick pipeline decision was an obvious victory. How sad that hard-core House Republicans can't recognize a win when they see it.

- Enterprise-Journal, McComb, Miss.